Great film and live music!
F.W. Murnau’s 1922 vampire classic, Nosferatu, is a haunting masterpiece of silent cinema. Jill Tracy and The Malcontent Orchestra perform their elegant, eerie original score.
Jill Tracy’s Nosferatu score debuted live in 1999 and toured theaters during Halloween season for five consecutive years to fervid sell-out crowds. Electric cello, violin, marimba, and orchestral percussion hang like velvet curtains around Tracy’s signature dark parlor piano.
“I wanted to honor the integrity of the film,” explained the composer in a 1999 SF Gate interview. “I wanted to dispose of any camp element and seamlessly enhance the emotion of Murnau’s stunning visuals. I don’t see Nosferatu as inciting horror or trepidation, as much as an unsettling allure. It’s a beautiful, sensual work; the listener should surrender to the spell of the music as intensely as to the spell of the vampire.”
Jill Tracy– grand piano
Alexander Kort– electric violoncello
Tyler Lewis– violin
Randy Odell– marimba, drums, and orchestral percussion
A collaboration with the Victoria, TX Independent Film Festival as part of the FRELS FRIGHT FEST. Tickets available through the FRELS FRIGHT FEST website or the Leo J. Welder Center box office, 214 N. Main / 361.570.TKTS.
LISTEN to excerpts from the score:
REVIEWS
“Remarkable….lyrical and lovely”
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
“Jill Tracy has created the definitive score to Nosferatu”
LOS ANGELES TIMES
“Extraordinary”
EAST BAY EXPRESS
“Uniquely qualified to give voice to the hallucinatory vampire that stalks F.W. Murnau’s black and white movie, Jill Tracy conjures up the crimson shades of the Grand Guignol and the emerald hues of absinthe.”
SF WEEKLY
“Unforgettable”
MARIN INDEPENDENT JOURNAL
“I saw Nosferatu at the Red Vic during a performance by Jill Tracy and the Malcontent Orchestra and I consider it one of the great experiences of my life… Overall, a delightfully macabre and incredibly subtle performance. This is the real Goth music, as in Baudelaire, Lon Chaney, and Boris Karloff. Wonderfully, exquisitely creepy.”
ED FIELDS, review